Well, this is the last day of Seishin. And of course, I hope you join us. At the end, we're going to have a shuso ceremony. But we should just keep practicing Seishin all the way up to that time. We don't have an important break, so we don't have to worry too much about that. But I want to remind you about questions. And, you know, often people say, I don't have a question. I've never had a question for these things. I hate them. So I'm going to give you some suggestions.

[01:04]

You only get one question. But you get a secondary response. First of all, question, response. But what about response? So, you know, I think it's good to ask. You've heard the shoes of those talks. And, you know, the cause, hopefully, for Kwan. It is a lot. When it's away, if you go, if you try to seek it out, you stumble past. If you don't seek it out, you remain a stupid fool. That's my life.

[02:09]

So, a lot. you know, there's a lot of stuff that you can draw on that. That's pretty direct. You don't have to do that. That's a suggestion. You know, in Japan, for a Kusa ceremony, the questions and answers are prepared. And we used to think, oh gosh, you know, that's, you know, What's that? But the more I think about it, the more I think it's not a bad idea, because the questions are all about the Dharma, and the responses are about the Dharma. And so there's something focused there. Often our questions are unfocused, and kind of personal and dumb. So could you give us an example of a dumb question?

[03:17]

No. That must have been a dumb question. That was a dumb question. At least the answer wasn't dumb. No. That was the response that wasn't natural. So, but I was thinking it might be good to have a book of questions that you can choose a question from your book of questions. It's one she's that will respond to one way and how does she self-respond to another way? So it's really, you know, not something that's by brokers. But it's not a bad idea because you don't have to do that. But if you don't have a question, you can refer to the book of questions. So that's something to think about.

[04:18]

You don't have that yet. So you'll have to work hard between now and then. And so, yesterday I gave us a few quotes from Soakhi Roshi, and today I will give one more. Soakhi Roshi said, the Buddha way is not to be distracted. The Buddha way is to not be distracted. You've got a shadow here. It is to become your role to the bone. This attitude is called samadhi or shikhan. It's like when shikhan comes up. We don't eat food. We don't eat food. But in recent years, most people think that you go to high school to get into college, and go to college to get a good job.

[05:37]

What do you do what you do? How do you do what you do? So often Bruce is cheating, you know. My mind gets very stimulated because as I continue to give talks and trim them over in my mind, It's so stimulating that I get many different ideas. And they feed on each other. They extend from each other. And sometimes, I'll be listening to my mind at the very end. And that's the thing to talk about. So today, well, today, I have a I want to talk about mandalas.

[06:40]

About a mandala. Not what a mandala is, but I want to talk about a mandala. But before that, I want to say something about an aphorism that I made up. Somebody else may have already made this up, but it goes like this. If you accept and acknowledge your faults and mistakes, what I see is your goodness. If you cover up your false mistakes with excuses, claiming your goodness, all I see is your false. And the same goes for when I do that. All you see is my false, if I'm covering something up. I'm not acknowledging my mistakes.

[07:44]

So, a mandala is a center and The energy that comes off that center in all directions is a diagram of the elements that have whatever is at the center expounded. So I'm going to use the example of this plastica as an example of a model, as an example of a model that you go one way or you go another in the opposite direction.

[08:48]

The mantra, the swastika, originally is a Buddhist symbol. It's a symbol of enlightened practice. And in Zen, it's a symbol of the mind seal, which is transmitted from one to another. in the Buddhist documents, in the Zen documents of transmission, there is always the symbol of the swastika. So it means happiness. And it was stolen by the Nazis from the Buddhists. And my feeling is that it should be taken back and honored for what it is.

[09:58]

Reminds me of when the Jews were in captivity in Babylon, they took the ark. The Babylonians stole the ark. And then, when they were freed, they took it back. So, I think it's a symbol of practice. It's at the heart of practice. So I think it should be resurrected and taken back and put in its rightful place, instead of being seen as a symbol of terror. So we see it as a symbol of terror, but it's really a symbol of true happiness. So I thought about this for a while, but it didn't occur to me until just now, thinking of it as a mandala, and as a mandala of both practice and destruction.

[11:06]

A mandala of evil or a mandala of enlightened understanding. So, they can go either way, depending on what is at the center. So, the Nasi Manjala has ego at the center, greed, hate, and delusion, just like the six worlds. And from that center, Arunachala is all the components, like death, and destruction, and suffering, and slavery, and delusion. There's the center, which is free hate and delusion, and what I was talking about yesterday, about the eightfold consciousness, the vertical consciousness, the horizontal consciousness, the mirror consciousness, and so forth.

[12:36]

Consciousness in the Nāci Māyāvā, The vertical is hierarchy, which is slavery, dominance. The horizontal is dominance and slavery. And the spokes are destruction, because the mandala has spokes. It's like this way, this way is the wheel, and radiating delusion are the hub. And then there are the spokes, which is the movement that creates the destruction.

[13:38]

In the Buddhist Mandala, emptiness and enlightenment are the hub. So vertical is seeing everything, all the individual pieces, parts or manifestations as Buddha nature. And horizontal is seeing the equality that we all share, that is everyone, whereas the vertical is the different aspects of that sameness. The difference of sameness and the sameness of difference. And in the middle, the hub, is where the actual... It's interesting, during the war, Second World War, the Nazis and the Italians and later the Japanese, it was called the Axis.

[14:47]

I don't know if you remember that. The Axis. And the spokes on the Buddha wheel are beneficial action. So it's the mandala of the eight vijnanas, the eight levels of consciousness, transmuted into the four wisdoms. So the motto of the practice of Buddhism, the swastika, symbolizes life, freedom, release, wisdom, happiness, and enlightenment. So it's the same symbol, but it's turned in opposite directions. But the Buddhists sometimes, and people say that the Nazis

[15:55]

swastika goes one way and the buddhist swastika goes the other way. But actually, the buddhist swastika goes both ways. But they're not the same, not the same both ways. Because the buddhist swastika goes one way, which is our individual practice. This is like dhījjhū-dharmāya, which I've been talking about. going up the mountain and coming down the mountain. Sometimes you see statues or pictures of Shakyamuni going up the mountain and coming down the mountain. Going up the mountain is Siddhisatva. Coming down the mountain is going up into the world. This is epitomized by the 10th oxford picture, you know, it is okay to put his bag of.

[16:57]

Comes down the mountain with his blisty, stony hands. So where was I? Direction. Direction. So direction going up and direction coming down. So the plastic are going one way and the other way for coming down and entering the world behind everything and coming back. That's the symbol of practice. This velocity can go in one way, and this velocity can go the other way. Which is not the same as the maximum velocity, because it goes its own way.

[18:02]

So it's quite a wonderful symbol of practice. And this is called daiji in Soto Zen. Daiji means the great matter. And the symbol or the outline of practice is symbolized by these two classes. So people have such connotations, you know, with this philosophy. And it's hard for a lot of people to even think about it. I think it's important to see that it is true, in that truth. In the beginning of the 20th century, there was a mystic, a Russian, and she was

[19:07]

the queen of mysticism in that period. And she was in Europe a lot. And her student was Dr. Olcott, or Professor Olcott. And they were both very studious and intelligent. But Dr. Olcott, when they were in Thailand, he realized that the The monks in Thailand were not, there was no, the meditation tradition had been totally neglected. They didn't even know about it. Sri Lanka, no, Sri Lanka. And so he encouraged the monks to resurrect their meditation practice. And so that was very interesting. And I think Mahatma Sayadaw was one of the early monks who picked that up.

[20:18]

And there was a German professor, a philosopher, who was interested in the Nazi movement. And he was around at that time. And he got the Swastika idea or something from Lenin or Swastika. And then he thought this would be a really good symbol for the Nazis. So he brought it together, or gave it to somebody, and they incorporated it as a symbol for the Nazis. I think that his very passion himself committed to spiritual. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At that time, nobody really knew it was going to happen. So there was a lot of cross information going back and forth.

[21:24]

Yeah. Yeah. Let me just make one little historical comment. The swastika was belong to the ancient Hindus before it would be a little more accurate to say that the Nazis stole it from them. The Buddhists and the Jains a little later also used it and they use it right up to this very day. All three religions. It's all over the place. But the ancient Hindus call themselves Aryans. And that's another piece that the Nazis picked up like a pure noble race. I think that it's not that the Nazis made an evil mandala and the Buddhists made a good mandala, but what we're learning from your talk so far, what I'm picking up is that any symbol can be used for wholesome or evil purposes.

[22:27]

And so can Buddhists also use symbols in evil ways sometimes. I would also like to add that there's also a Native American symbol to it, and in northern Canada there was actually a town called Susquehanna, which during World War II, they changed the name to Churchill. Every religion has used that symbol. And that's only one character, one character, one characteristic of the way it's expressed. It's expressed in so many different ways. I have a little booklet about how many different ways the swastika is drawn or written. And you'd be surprised at all the variations and the way they're thinking about it.

[23:30]

I had somehow in my reading picked up the idea that in most of the ancient traditions it was a sun symbol. A sun symbol, yes, that's right. A source of radiance. Yeah, a source of radiance, yeah. And that the inverse, therefore, is the black hole, an afternoon which no light escapes. And it is very directly related to your teachings in this practice. I'm just stunned. Also, another connection that came to me was that when something is ignored, when you try to close it out of the visual field like this, you become very crippled in very important ways. It's painful to resurrect what's been closed off. That's right. My recollection, all the Japanese temples I've visited, they had most of that sasakana.

[24:34]

It was always spitting to the left, never to the right. If you look at a map of, say, Kyoto, the temples are marked with this sasakana going this way. And I asked some questions about that, and people explained it. In this direction, it means compassion. In the other direction, it means power. I don't know if that fits in your interpretation. Well, that's one interpretation. I don't know. There are various interpretations. But you never see the Nazi symbol. It's always. Well, you see it in our transmission documents. I see. That's what I'm talking about. It seems to me what you're pointing towards is the importance of this harmony of sameness and difference, and that's the axis that this model turns on. And so the Nazis, in promoting ego, were trying to make everything the same with the one ego. At the same time, in Japan, some Buddhist leaders were using the ideology of harmony to promote the imperialism.

[25:40]

And they're really the same thing, right? It's an attempt to erase the difference so that there's no harmony, just sameness. Right. So how do we, how do we prolong the difference without getting attached to the difference and believing in the difference in some sensual way? By realizing the oneness, the equality, you know, Equality is horizontal, right? So it's the basis. The vertical is dangerous. Hierarchy is dangerous, you know, because the higher up you go, the farther you fall. And the less stable it becomes. This is why the leader should not be at the top. The leader should be at the bottom. So, you know, there's a quote of the hundred foot pole, stepping off the hundred foot pole.

[26:45]

The way to step off the hundred foot pole is before you get on the top, you should step off. Also, equality is not necessarily seamless. No. Well, that's what that's what the London saying. But equality is not is not seamless. That's the point. Equality and difference. James is pointing out that Cassius way is the same. Exactly. That kind of equality really is the same. If you're not the same, what is you? Yes. So what is the one is the perversion of the other? Yeah. I mean, both are good points. What is the perversion of the other? I think it's important not to think of the bad fascists and the good us, which often happens.

[27:52]

Capitalism actually makes everything the same. If you make a chair, It's the same chair for everyone in most conference rooms, which means it doesn't fit anyone. And there are many things in our culture of, it looks like difference, but it's not real difference. They're kind of... pseudo-differences that people can pin a false identity on. So I just don't think we should forget our own tendencies towards, call it fascism or call it whatever you want, turning the swastika. We all turn, and myself included, turn the swastika the wrong way some of the time. That's pretty extreme.

[28:58]

I understand what you're saying, but I think that's pretty extreme. I think we all get off. But through practice we come back on. This swastika is so terrifying. I want to express my gratitude for your willingness to talk about it. For me, at this point, it's quite new, the idea of it. Over here is a compassionate Buddhist approach, and over here is a terrifying destructive approach. In fact, this is such an impact, such a hugely empowered symbol, hugely powerful symbol, that that separation, I don't think I can do it. This is a point of contemplation for me now, and an investigation to see its role in the Buddha Dharma.

[30:05]

Out in Utah, you don't talk about this philosophy. I'm saying this is a taboo subject. Yes. The many quarters of our society. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm sticking my neck out. Thank you. But I know when you were talking, you put your hands together like this. So, you know, this is one side and this is the other. And unless we can do this in turn, when we do this, we can talk about it. If we're doing this, we can't. I think that Swastika also, for me, has this feeling of this terrifying groupthink, you know, that people, that any of us could be sucked into, you know, because if you read anything about the period and then also these horrible things that have happened in other places, I mean, I'm thinking of Rwanda, where a whole segment of the population was inspired to rise up and hack their neighbors to death.

[31:16]

And I guess I think we, I kind of agree with Bob. We have to be, we also kind of encourage group think here in a way. We have to be very, we really have to keep that balance between equality and difference to make sure that our group really does include everybody and not just liberals. Well, not wanting to be stupid or a fool today, I actually went home last night and got online, and I searched for the 10 most uncommon questions about Buddhism. Of course, I went through and came up with, you know, they're very personal questions. And it was interesting, there were a number of, I found a lot of pages about But be careful about the questions that you might get online, because someone actually talked about why the Buddhists use a swastika symbol, and that it must be that the Buddhists are trying to make the world better after the Nazis, so the Buddhists have taken the symbol from the Nazis.

[32:37]

I began to practice that in Germany last year, and the people who were there who were helping me through practice We're very much trying to turn it around, in a sense. And they understood it explicitly in those terms. And they said, you know, if this hadn't happened, we might not be practicing Buddhism now. And that was very important for the whole community. So I felt that energy. OK, we really don't have time to use it, but now it's Mary's turn. I would like, would you post the aphorism of a poem for us? I'm from the aphorism, yeah. OK. do you reclaim a symbol?

[33:52]

By honoring it in its proper way and for its proper meaning. And how do you purify it of the deep and fearful connotations that it has come to reflect. That is purifying in time.

[34:24]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ